sutclifffandomcom-20200213-history
Heroes and History
Heroes and History is a non-fiction book for children published in 1965 by B.T. Batsford, with illustrations by Charles Keeping. It is one of the Batsford Living History Series. The book is dedicated to a fellow author, "for Elizabeth Goudge, with my love." Heroes and History consists of ten biographies of historical or quasi-historical British heroes. Some, such as King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Montrose, also featured in Sutcliff's fiction. The Preface defines a Hero not as a great leader, but as a man who "has a special kind of magnetism that lives on after him, so that stories gather to him, even other men's tales, or stories that were old before he was born." It notes that only one of its subjects, Montrose, post-dates the Mediaeval period, though it proposes Lawrence of Arabia as a candidate for a twentieth-century Hero. Caratacus British recorded history begins with its contact with Romans. King Cunobeline of the powerful Cattivlauni tribe ('the Cats of War') of southern Britain died in 42 CE, leaving three sons. The two younger, Togodumnus and Caratacus, deposed Bericus the eldest, who took refuge with the Emperor Claudius, and seized Roman ships when Bericus was not sent back to them. In response, Rome sent Aulus Plautius at the head of the 2nd, 9th, 14th, and 20th legions to Britain, landing at Chichester Harbour in late summer. They met the Cattivlauni and their allies at Lyndyn or London, where Togodumnus was killed and the British forced to withdraw northwards. In early September, Claudius landed with a huge force including war elephants. Battle was joined near the British camp north of Lyndyn, where the British chariot wings were foiled by triplines. Caratacus, with his wife and daughter, fled to the Silures tribe in south Wales. Claudius took possession of the Cattivlauni capital at Colchester and established a Roman province governed by Aulus Plautius. Caratacus continued to fight the Roman invasion for the next seven years. The new governor, Ostorius Scapula, then conquered central and north Wales over the course of two years, finally defeating Caratacus somewhere on the northwest border, most likely Caer Caradoc, Shropshire. With his wife and daughter captured and his war host destroyed, Caratacus escaped to Aldborough, the capital of the Brigantes under Queen Cartimandua and her consort King Venutius, subdued by the Romans two years earlier. Rather than assist him, Cartimandua arrested him on the Romans' behalf. Caratacus, his captured family and bodyguard, were paraded at Rome, and then allowed to live there in retirement. On that inglorious note, Caratacus passes out of history. Arthur King Arthur is the most famous of British heroes, and the popular image of him is shaped by Sir Thomas Malory's fifteenth-century Le Morte d'Arthur, ''or more recently by Alfred Tennyson's Victorian ''Idylls of the King. The Arthurian tradition is as follows: King Utha Pendragon fell in love with Igraine Duchess of Cornwall, and in the guise of her soon-to-be-late husband conceived Arthur. Arthur was spirited away at birth by Utha's magician Merlin and raised by Sir Ector alongside his son Kay. Utha died and Merlin arranged a tournament at which a miracle would point out the next king. Arthur drew the sword from the stone and was anointed king. Now Arthur's unknown elder half-sister Maugose, Queen of Orkney, slept with him and conceived a son, Mordred, who was to be his downfall. Meanwhile, Arthur received his sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, married Guenivere, and assembled a company of knights around the Round Table, each with their particular adventures, who embarked on the quest for the Holy Grail. Finally Mordred joins his father's court and maliciously exposes the affair of Queen Guenivere and Sir Lancelot, forcing Arthur to punish them. Lancelot rescues Guenivere, but as Arthur lays siege to them, Mordred rises in revolt. Arthur and Mordred meet in battle, Mordred giving Arthur his fatal wound. Sir Bedievere assists Arthur to the lake where he is magically transported to the island of Avalon, while Lancelot and Guenivere become a hermit and nun. In Malory's work, Arthur himself is not even the hero – rather it is Lancelot. It is now thought there be a grain of truth in the King Arthur legend. A thousand years before Malory, at the end of Roman Britain, lived a man named Artorius or Artos, perhaps kin to Aurelius Ambrosianus and a royal descendant of Magnus Maximus as in Welsh legend, perhaps a bastard. He is referred to in early sources as Comes Britanniorum, the erstwhile Roman title of the leader of a mobile defense force of cavalry. He is also accused of robbing the Church, perhaps by requisitioning their property. After his death his name became attached to countless older Celtic landmarks and tales, the quest for a magic cup among them. Arthurian tradition as we know it was codified under Eleanor of Aquitaine. But beneath the accumulated tradition, a realistic narrative might be reconstructed: In the late 5th century, a member of the Royal House of Britain got his warrior's training as a reiver in the western hills, then served his kinsman Ambrosius, ruler of lowland Britain, as his cavalry leader against the Saxon incursions. Ambrosius dies or otherwise exits the story, and Arthur, now the sole defender of Britain, wages the twelve battles described by Nennius in the 8th century, in Lincolnshire, York, Chester, Scotland, Norfolk and Suffolk, and after twenty years defeated Aelle of the South Saxons at Badon, probably Liddington Hill near Swindon. Perhaps there in the White Horse Vale he was crowned an emperor, as two sources style him, and he reigned another twenty years, coming to an unknown end. In any case, the victory at Badon ensured the survival of British civilization and delayed the Saxon conquest of the lowlands until shortly before the arrival of St. Augustine. Alfred More than three hundred years after Arthur, it is Saxon England that is menaced by new sea-wolves, the Northmen. Alfred was the fifth son of the scholarly King Ethelwulf of Wessex, born in 849. It was when he was a young child that the Vikings first overwintered in England, beginning a phase of settlement. Alfred made two pilgrimages to Rome, during the second of which his father remarried Princess Judith of France, prompting his second brother Ethelbald to revolt, dividing the kingdom. After the deaths of both Ethelwulf and Ethelbald, Alfred's third brother Ethelbert reunited the kingdom, in which was succeeded by the fourth brother, young Ethelred. At sixteen, Alfred commanded an army, despite physical infirmities – he suffered from an abdominal complaint, and was also epileptic. In 865, the Danish brothers Halfdan and Ivar the Boneless invaded East Anglia, Northumbria, and next Mercia and Wessex. The Saxons won a clear victory in the White Horse Vale, but two months later Ethelred received received a mortal wound and died at Easter, leaving Alfred king of Wessex. After a year of fighting in Wessex, Alfred bought off the Danes, who turned to Mercia and Northumbria instead. Part of the Danish war host then returned three times to ravage Wessex, despite receiving Dane geld, and Alfred began to build a navy. He withdrew into the Parratt Marshes, more or less the country of Arthur's Avalon, using it as a base to counter the Danish raids, though the famous stories of burning the cakes or disguising himself as a harper are only legend. He defeated the Danish warlord Guthrum at Edington and Chippenham, and forced him and twenty-nine of his captains to convert to Christianity before they withdrew to East Anglia. Guthrum attacked again in 884, and their navies drew even in two battles off East Anglia. Alfred marched through Viking-held territory reducing the towns to smoking ruins, including London. Guthrum sought terms, and England was divided in two, Saxon and Danish, with Alfred ruling the south while his friend Ethelred held Mercia. In the years of peace, Alfred rebuilt his ruined towns and restored government and the rule of law, renewed trade and maintained the navy. Scholarly like his father, he improved his Latin in order to translate many books into English. As hardworking as he had been in wartime, he died in his forties. Hereward Tradition has it that Hereward "the Wake" of Mercia was the second son of Earl Leofric and the famous Lady Godiva, and a wild youth. At the court of Edward the Confessor he continued his father's feud with Earl Godwin of Kent and his son Harold, and clashed with the king's Norman favourites, and was exiled for throwing one off a roof. He joined the household of his godfather Gilbert, the lord of York and Ghent, where legend has it he killed Gilbert's escaped polar bear (allegedly kin to his overlord Earl Siward) in single combat, rescuing a girl called Elftruda in the process, and then played a prank with its carcass on the men who left her to its mercies. He then went adventuring in Ireland and Corwall, where he supposedly assisted in the romance of an Irish Viking chief and a Cornish princess. He then served Count Baldwin in Flanders, and married a noble maiden called Torfrida. Duke William of Normandy invaded England under its new king, Hereward's old enemy Harold Godwinson, while Hereward remained neutral in Flanders. Then his estate in Lincolnshire was granted to a Norman and his mother's household insulted, and he quietly prepared to return. He and his Saxon liegemen fell on the Normans at Bourne and massacred them. With refugee Saxons, he carried on a guerrilla war against the local Normans under the cruel Ivo de Taillebois. He challenged one Frederick Warenne to a duel and carried off the monks of Peterborough's gold from the greed of their Norman abbot Thorold. He became master of the Fen country and was besieged by the Normans, fruitlessly until he was betrayed by the monks of Ely, who led the Normans through the marshes and killed a thousand of Hereward's men in the ensuing attack. He regrouped at Bourne and resumed his guerrilla war throughout Mercia, until he captured Ivo de Taillebois – and used him as a bargaining chip to make peace with King William. He sword fealty and had his estates restored, and in 1074 led the Saxons under William in Maine. He remarried, had sons, and died peacefully in old age. Feeling this "straw death" to be unworthy of their hero, however, legend soon sprang up among his people that he went down fighting in his hall against the Normans. Llewellin Llewellin Ap Gryffyd was the grandson of Llewellin the Great, Prince of North Wales. He and his brother Owain inherited the Princedom from their uncle Davydd in 1246, but Henry III of England swiftly seized its southern territories and forced the teenage Princes to pay homage. North Wales not being big enough for the both of them, Llewellin defeated his brothers Owain and Davydd and set out to reconquer his grandfather's kingdom. Henry's son Edward was made Earl of Chester, but did not succeed in containing Llewellin, nor did the King. Llewellin then backed Simon de Montfort in the Barons' War against Henry, and though de Montfort was ultimately defeated, Henry was forced to confirm Llewellin in the Principality of Wales. Upon Edward I's accession to the throne, Llewellin declined to do further homage, and Edward retaliated by seizing his cousin Eleanor de Montfort en route to her wedding to Llewellin. Next summer, Edward led his army into Wales, penning Llewellin in the mountains until he surrendered. Edward stripped him of most of his lands and brought him to court, where he at last met and married Lady Eleanor. She died a few years later giving birth to their daughter Gwenllion. Edward and the Archbishop of Canterbury embarked on a ruthless campaign to Anglicize the Welsh government and church, breeding resentment until Llewellin and his brother Davydd were moved to revolt once again. Once again Edward led an overwhelming force into Wales and mewed Llewellin up in his mountains. Llewellin rejected the terms of surrender and escaped with a small band, then attacked Cardigan and the middle Marches with a force that was far too small. At a place that is now lost to history, he was defeated and killed by the Marcher Lords. Robin Hood It will probably never be known whether Robin Hood has any historical basis. Some trace him back to a primitive fertility spirit, or to a succession of men all enjoying the title of master outlaw. The earliest written record is in Piers Ploughman of 1377, where he is an established figure, and the earliest complete ballad dates from a century later, The Lytell Geste of Robin Hood, printed by Wynken de Worde. It apparently combines the plots of several existing ballads: Robin Hood and Sir Richard at Lee, and the Sheriff of Nottingham's archery tournament; the King in disguise as an abbot; and Robin's death by blood-letting at Kirklees Priory. But the traditions of Robin's origins are too numerous and contradictory to guess who he was, or even when he lived. The traditional association with King Richard Coeur-de-Lion and King John is discounted by scholars, but a variant which places him in the reign of Henry III dates only from a play of 1601, nor is a theory about Edward II's time entirely convincing. One conclusion that can be drawn is that the stories reflect an era when Saxon and Norman were still clearly at odds. William Wallace Young country gentleman William Wallace and his contemporary Robert Bruce were the chief antagonists of Edward I when he turned from Wales to the north and acquired the title of "the Hammer of the Scots." In 1291, Scotland was in turmoil after the death of its child queen, and Edward contrived to establish his puppet John Baliol in the throne. Baliol revolted and Edward invaded Scotland in 1296, enflaming Scottish opinion by the bloody capture of the port of Berwick. Edward carried the day, but revolt broke out again the next year, when William Wallace is first heard of attacking the English garrison at Lanark. He joined forces with Sir John Douglas, the first to draw the scattered revolts into a combined resistance, though infighting was fatal to them and most of its leaders were forced to surrender. Wallace, however, remained in action, defeating a larger and more experienced English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Wallace swept the English out of Scotland and carried the war into northern England. Wallace was knighted and made "Guardian of Scotland", though he was supported by few of the nobles. Edward, now freed from a war in France, invaded again the next year, and Wallace delayed a pitched battle as long as possible, but was eventually forced to meet Edward at Slamannnan Moor near Falkirk. Wallace's small number of archers and cavalry and his inflexible "schiltroon" defensive formations were not equal to Edward's heavy cavalry and most of all the heavy fire of the English longbows, of which the Scots had little previous experience. Wallace survived but his army was massacred or dispersed in the rout and retreat, and he lost the supreme leadership of Scotland. He continued to fight, and was even sent to ask help of Philip of France and Pope Boniface VIII, but he disappears abruptly for four of the remaining seven years of his life. Legends accrue to these blank years, such as the ballad in which he escapes an English ambush dressed in his lady's clothes. Meanwhile, the Scottish nobles who had joined the resistance were beaten into submission by 1304, but Wallace refused to surrender. After the fall of Stirling Castle, Wallace was the last active Scottish rebel, and Edward set a price on his head. After a year and a half he was betrayed and taken, marched to London and brought before the king, though there is no record of what passed between them. After a trial for treason, he was immediately hanged, drawn, and quartered. Soon afterwards, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots. Robert the Bruce Upon the death of seven-year-old Margaret, Queen of Scots and Heiress of Norway, the pretenders to the Scottish throne agreed to accept the arbitration of Edward I of England, who selected his puppet John Baliol and then goaded him into rebellion. Robert Bruce, the young Earl of Carrick and the grandson of one of the leading candidates for the throne, with lands on both sides of the border, initially fought in Edward's invasion force, capturing Sir William Douglas's family, but turned coat and joined the rebels, only for most of the rebellion to be quashed at Irvine. With Wallace's victory at Stirling Bridge, Bruce came out again, and may have been the man to knight Wallace. Bruce was among the cavalry at the defeat of Falkirk, and Wallace was replaced as Guardian of Scotland by Bruce and Red John Comyn, son of another leading candidate for the throne. Bruce was among the rebel leaders forced to submit to Edward during the final years of Wallace's guerrilla war, and legend has it he was present at Wallace's execution. In 1306 in a quarrel over a betrayed pact, Bruce killed Comyn – most inconveniently, before the High Altar of the Kirk in Dumfries. With the support of the rebellious Bishop Wishart, Bruce was hastily crowned at Scone. He was soon forced to withdraw into the highlands, and his family and friends were captured, the men and boys executed. Yet Bruce and his ally Sir James Douglas carried on, surprising the English garrison of Douglas Castle on Palm Sunday and gathering a new force. Then Edward died, and his son Edward II cancelled his Scottish campaign. Bruce used the respite to settle his civil war with the Comyns and Baliols, then he and Douglas retook the lands south of the Forth. After several years of indecisive fighting with Edward II, only a few castles remained in English hands, and a large force marched north to relieve Stirling. Advancing unwisely across Bannock Burn gorge, they were hemmed in and massacred. Scotland was cleared of the English, though the war dragged on for another fourteen years, when Bruce's son David was married to Edward's daughter Joan Make-Peace. Bruce was by then dying of a skin disease, and despatched Douglas to the Holy Land with his embalmed heart. Douglas was killed en route fighting the Saracens in Grenada, and the sole survivor of his company brought his body and the king's heart back to Scotland. Owen Glyndwr A century after Llewellin, Owen Glyndwr was a gentleman of Powys, erstwhile squire to Henry Bolingbroke and Richard II. A dispute with Lord Grey of Ruthin, in which Glyndwr was not supported by Henry IV, eventually pushed him to rebellion. He avoided battle with the king, but gained control the open country, capturing both Lord Grey and Edmund Mortimer, guardian to Richard II's rightful heir. Mortimer married Glyndwr's daughter Jane and joined Glyndwr's cause. The Percies of Northumberland came out for Glyndwr, led by Harry "Hotspur" Percy. The King and Prince Hal met him at Shrewsbury in the bloodiest battle on English soil since Hastings and had to quash the rebellion in the north before turning back to Wales. The next year, the Marches were forced to make terms with Glyndwr. While a fresh Percy revolt distracted the king, Glyndwr landed French allies and marched on Worcester, where he and the king met in a week-long stalemate before Glyndwr marched away, and Henry attempted his fifth abortive invasion of Wales. Now for a time Glyndwr's movements were lost to history, though legends persist, such as staying as an anonymous guest in the house of a Marcher Lord whose men were hunting for him. But in 1407, the dying Henry once again sent Prince Hal against Aberystwith and Harlech. Mortimer died during the siege of Harlech, and Glyndwr's wife and daughter were captured. Of the last six years of Glyndwr's life little is known; Wales had been devastated by his campaigns and he no longer had the means to do more than raid the Marches. Henry V pardoned the Welsh rebels, though Glyndwr apparently took no heed of it, but finally disappeared from view in 1415. A legend says that he and his men sleep in a cave, awaiting the Day of Judgment. Montrose James Graham, son of the Earl of Montrose was born in 1612 and educated at St. Andrews, where he earned the enmity of Archibald Campbell, future Earl of Argyll, by winning the archery medal after him. He offended Charles I by being absent from his Scottish coronation, and returned to Scotland just in time for the public outcry against Charles and Archbishop Laud's attempted reforms to the Presbyterian church. The Scots signed the National Covenant, formed a general assembly, and met Charles's attempt to march north. Montrose, one of the first to sign the Covenant, marched his volunteer army into Durham during the Bishops' War and forced the summoning of the first English Parliament in a decade, which swiftly rid Charles of the Archbishop. Meanwhile Argyll, the leading power of Highland Scotland though not openly a Covenanter, began to discuss deposing the king himself. Montrose warned Charles of it and was jailed for treason. The Covenant had by now become a puritan tyranny, and Montrose abandoned it: when Charles declared war on Parliament, Montrose supported the Royalist cause. He got a Marquisate, but little material support in winning Scotland away from Argyll's power; he arrived too late to support Prince Rupert at the defeat of Marston Moor. He returned to Scotland disguised as a groom. He met Alisdair McDonald at Blair and marched for provisions on Perth, which he prevented the Highlanders from looting; at Aberdeen his envoy's drummer-boy was shot, and the town not spared. Montrose's forces narrowly escaped a stand in a derelict castle and surprised Argyll in his own castle at Inverary on Christmas Day; in the new year they took another at Inverlochy, breaking Argyll's power. Montrose's son Johnnie died there. Though his success bred support, his army began to desert for lack of pay from the King. He took Dundee before it could dwindle too far, and was immediately forced to march his drunk and exhausted troops out again ahead of approaching Covenanter heavy cavalry, in a successful retreat as celebrated as Montrose's victories. In the next months he won battles at Aldearn, Alford, and Kilsyth, which last destroyed the Covenanter army in Scotland. Chiefs flocked to his banner, and the King appointed him Lieutenant Governor of Scotland, allowing him to summon a Parliament. The King called him to his aid in the south, yet did not hurry himself to join forces with Montrose, while Argyll sent word to David Leslie to march back north. Meanwhile, Montrose's McDonald and Gordon allies went home, and two Border lords who had pledged to join him surrendered to Leslie instead. Montrose retreated to the hills, but were taken by surprise while camped near Selkirk. Most of the army fled or surrendered, though Montrose escaped, and the Covenant was once more in control of Scotland. Montrose's wife Magdalen died, and King Charles surrendered to the Covenanters and was handed over to Cromwell by the Marquis of Argyll. Montrose went to the continent, trying to raise troops for the king, and a year after Charles I's execution returned to Scotland in support of Charles II. He was surprised, defeated, betrayed, and taken to Edinburgh, where he was executed without a trial. Publication history # London : Batsford, 1965. Illus. Charles Keeping. 152 pp. Index. # New York : Putnam, 1965. Illus. Charles Keeping.https://www.worldcat.org/title/heroes-and-history/oclc/1307691?referer=di&ht=edition # London : Batsford, 1967. Illus. Charles Keeping. # New York : Putnam, 1967. Illus. Charles Keeping.https://www.worldcat.org/title/heroes-and-history/oclc/705375743?referer=di&ht=edition References Category:Books